Noah Gragson drops a truth bomb at 2025 Snowball Derby: “ Short track racing is as alive as it's ever been”

NASCAR Cup Series driver Noah Gragson, who is all set for this year’s Snowball Derby, doesn’t believe that short track racing is dead. 2025 marks the 58th running of the coveted super late model stock car event.

Despite the rain-plagued start, the field is now set for Sunday’s main event. Cup Series regulars Erik Jones and Kyle Busch are in it, too. Other NASCAR names on the 2025 Snowball Derby entry list are Connor Jones, Derek Kraus, Stephen Nasse, Derek Thorn, Bayley Currey, Jake Garcia, Kaden Honeycutt, Dawson Sutton, Cole Butcher, Bubba Pollard, and former Truck Series champion Ty Majeski. Only Gragson, Busch, and Majeski have won the race before.

Not all short-track races have received as much support as the Five Flags Speedway, which hosts the annual 300-lap feature. As per reports, several short tracks across the country have shut down since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. The sport has lost sponsors, as well as fan support, since.

However, Noah Gragson thinks that short track racing is far from being dead. In an interview with Short Track Scene, the Front Row Motorsports driver said,

“People say short track racing is dead, I don’t necessarily believe that. Come down here to the Snowball Derby, you have a good atmosphere, a good racetrack, good people that put on this race… short track racing is as alive as its ever been in my opinion.”

“Maybe at certain tracks it might be dead, and that might be a product of who’s running them,” he added.

Fans can watch this year’s Snowball Derby live on FloRacing, starting from noon ET on Sunday, December 7. The winner will take home $50,000 and the iconic Tom Dawson trophy.

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Noah Gragson criticizes the NASCAR 25 video game’s driver rating system

Noah Gragson didn’t like driver ratings for the newly released NASCAR 25 video game by iRacing Studios. Even fans were left debating the ratings on social media.

Gragson was ranked No. 31 out of 47 drivers with an overall rating of 71. Reflecting on his ranking, Gragson said,

“I don’t really care about that. It’s just you look at who is the best driver in our sport right now? Then why isn’t he 100 overall? It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, but whoever the guy or girl was that did it, they did a bad job, in my opinion, but I personally don’t care if I’m a 71.”

“I think the first thing is it’s important that we have a good game because we haven’t in the last 10 years, which sucks because I think all of us drivers currently in the series have grown up playing NASCAR video games when they’re really, really good,” he added.

Noah Gragson is currently in his off-season. He will return in the No. 4 Front Row Racing car for the 2026 season. Next up for him is the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on February 1, 2026.